World Nuclear Association Blog

The nuclear industry needs
to satisfy the multi-criteria approach to risk that banks take when
they decide whether to invest in a large infrastructure project.
Only then, can it expect to attract this form of financing to
nuclear new build projects, writes Ron Cameron on the latest WNN Editorial article.

Specifically,says Cameron, banks look for
long-term certainty on price, stable government policy, industry
reputation, regulatory certainty, the process for addressing
planning and environmental issues and public acceptance, in
addition to the economics of the project.

Cameron argues that European wholesale electricity
markets are currently not favourable to nuclear power, however.
That, he says, is because the role of nuclear in offsetting the negative
effect on price of feed-in tariffs and grid priorities for
renewable forms of energy is not adequately recognised. The cost to
the system of having intermittency of supply is often borne by the
nuclear plants through their role in providing back-up generating
capacity or otherwise by the consumer through higher electricity
prices, subsidies or taxes. With no level playing field for nuclear
in liberalised electricity markets, there is a real difficulty in
seeing where nuclear new build is going to come from in Europe,
without government action. Cameron thinks that there is a need to explicitly recognise the
advantages that nuclear power provides to stabilise these markets
long term, to support the move to a low carbon economy and to help
with security of supply.